Of Manis, Pedis and Matryoshka Dolls

Damn I hate getting back into blogging after being off it for more than a month or so! I miss the days when I was actually disciplined enough to do daily blogging! Perhaps I'll get back into that.

More recently than ever, I've been really getting into the spirit of frequent manicures (not so much of pedis - hello, you can't ever see them!) Here are the ones I did for the past month!

China Glaze's 'Papaya Punch' (Orange) from the Island Escape Collection and China Glaze's 'Kiwi Cool-ada' (Green)! The latter one left a matte finish. I love matte, really. Which was why I bought...

 A matte finisher by Essie!

 Essie's 'Matte About You' with China Glaze's 'Love Marilyn' from the Eye Candy Collection!

 I heart matte!

And I finally received my polishes I ordered nearly a month ago from Becks, when I got back from Perth, Australia! 

 Ordered it from a blogshop, Beauty So Fly! The prices are super affordable!

 China Glaze's Hunger Games Capitol Colours Collection (I blogged about this previously!) 

Left to Right: Riveting, Luxe & Lush, Stone Cold, Dress Me Up

 It was super difficult removing three layers of CG's Love Marilyn completely. All that glitter was an irritant!

 Started off with CG's Dress Me Up first.

 Then added CG's Luxe & Lush, the awesome flakie top coat!

 Final product! 

I was too lazy to scrape the glitter from the previous pedi off my big toes. Added CG's Riveting and Stone Cold to my small toes! Looks pretty weird, but who cares?

And while we're on the subject of The Hunger Games... I got into the newly released Facebook game, 'The Hunger Games Adventures' today! The graphics were pretty awesome, and it just mainly revolves around doing small chores (or quests) here and there, all while following a pretty interesting storyline that non-readers of The Hunger Games books or non-watchers of The Hunger Games movie will get.

 Nooo! Service maintenance! I hate that! I kept refreshing all the way waiting for the game to start up again...

Some screenshots of my progress in the game. Shown here: Forest Escape!

Shown here: The Justice Building, with some Peacekeepers, Katniss and Gale! (I originally thought I would be playing Katniss, so I dressed my character up like her. Bummer.)

Check out this awesome cartoon by Hilaritron! Its owner, Jason, has cleverly weaved TWENTY Hunger Games names into this cartoon. Readers of The Hunger Games trilogy, can you spot all of them?

(Double-click to view it a little better!)

JSYK, I was only able to find 16 of 'em...

On to Matryoshka/Babushka dolls! They are basically Russian nesting dolls (4 more are hidden inside this big wooden doll!). In fact, the dolls are considered to be a fertility symbol, to represent the future generations (Babushka means 'old women' in Russian!)

I saw it lying on the desk in my mother's office one day and I just took some snaps of it! Someone in her office apparently went to Moscow and got this along with some Russian vodka and chocolates!

 Bring on the next doll!

 ...And the next!

 The complete set!

34 Euros! That's pretty expensive...

 Tried one of the Russian chocolates! It was pretty good!

 An assortment of chocolates!

My mother brought me out to lunch one day and I had some real good pasta, clear soup and scones! Loved the pink whipped cream!

And below are some of the completed works for the office's events coming up in April... I had some part in designing then (and designing, and then again...), albeit multiple and countless times! They were all polished by a more professional designer, and then printed!

A painting in the office. Purrrrrdy!

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The Sims Medieval Review

This review's coming in a li'l late, but namely 'cos I required some time to actually experience the gameplay and all that. I took approximately two days trying to get through a whole ambition (which requires you to complete a number of quests - tons for you to choose from - they aren't all compulsory though). 

As long as that took me, I still got the game down pat in less than an hour! The screen/camera controls, the shortcuts, the cheat codes... they were all pretty much the same as that of The Sims 3 (save for some of the cheat codes used in Sims 3 weren't usable in Sims Medieval already! Pity...). The basis of the game though (heroes, quests, ambitions) took a li'l longer trying to figure. I used the 'Lessons' in the (...) menu most of the time to get the gist of the game! 

Anyway, the game took up about 5GB of hard drive space, took close to an hour to finish installing, then it ran pretty smoothly for me afterwards! 

For The Sims Medieval, you don't exactly start off (or even play) with a family! You are only presented with a single Ambition when you start, then you get to create a monarch (as in a king or a queen, depending on which gender you choose!) that would be living in a majestic stone-walled castle, with his/her quarters (or the throne room) nestled in the center. And in order to complete the ambition, you'd have to completed quests, which would give you the QPs (quest points) required to build all the locations necessary for that particular ambition, which would then nest all 10 professions in the game! Some of my fave ones in the game are the Physician, the Monarch and the Jacoban and Peteran Priests! 

While you don't get to exclusively play a single character all at the same time (you switch your heroes as you complete each quest and move on to the next), the quests are still the most fun part that really builds this game to be what it is. 

The graphics and the scenery in the game are pretty awesome. Of course, they might not seem as great as the ones in Sims 3, but that's 'cause the game is set in the Middle Ages, so everything has to have that aged look to it! Even the clothes the Sims don are totally ye olde Medieval! I love all the clothing in the game! But I sure do hope there'd be Custom Content for this game in the future though. 

All righty, I'm not feelin' up for a really long review, so I included tons of really unnecessary screenshots taken throughout my gameplay. Here are my ratings for the game...

Game Technicalities: ★★★★✩

Graphics: ★★★★✩

Fun-factor: ★★★★★ (only if you like quests! Or the Medieval times in general)

Environment: ★★★★★

Price: ★★★★✩

Overall: ★★★★★

Alternatively, check out a much more detailed (obvs.!) review of the game: Geeky Women's Blog Sims Medieval review. 

The cover of the game case! 

A close-up of my Monarch, Lady Ariana the Great. I named her last name 'Westershire' after the kingdom.

The Queen spars with a bandit in the forest outskirts of the castle.

She leaves him wounded.

Lady Ariana sharpening her sword amidst a number of corpses.

She ignores the guy's begging and sends him to the stocks. 

The wooden plank thing is the stocks, just in case you were wondering.

Sims back then ate with their hands. Yes, even with soups.

They send their mail with pigeons. How cool is that?!

Some angel dude comes down from the sky to officiate the wedding.

In ye olde Middle Ages, people can bathe (and use the loo - which was just a vase) even while there are others in the vicinity with no real partitions.

Little boys and girls (wait I haven't seen li'l girls so far) don't grow up until their parents die. Sad, ain't it? Their parents can send them to do their shopping though.

The Pit of Judgement... Jump off that plank and you're dead. Literally.

And just a few quick photos of some soups Bec and I had on Monday. Can't get enough! I got the Boston Clam Chowder again. Yummers!

 Bec's Meatless Minestrone with some macaroni in it. 

We tried to tweak with the Aperture and focus settings and stuff on my camera.

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